Variety's Scores

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For 17,786 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 52% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.4 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 63
Highest review score: 100 IMAX: Hubble 3D
Lowest review score: 0 Divorce: The Musical
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9,137 out of 17786
  2. Mixed: 7,013 out of 17786
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17786
17786 movie reviews
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  1. Proteus
    Proteus has enough erotic and exotic content to win back some of the arthouse viewers previously beguiled by Greyson's "Lilies." But pic lacks that gem's lush aesthetics and impassioned complexity, ending up a tad remote.
  2. The Child I Never Was
    Though Pieck is to be admired for the rigorousness in telling this chilling story (on what looks like a near zero budget), the film itself remains resolutely unlikable.
  3. Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven's Gate
    Unmistakably sympathetic but mostly even-handed documentary.
  4. 800 Bullets
    An uneven but exuberantly anarchic comedy homage to the spaghetti Western.
  5. Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire
    Goes beyond simple Bush-bashing to paint a horrifying portrait of organized U.S. imperialist expansion and public deception stretching back to the early Reagan era.
  6. Celsius 41.11: The Temperature at Which the Brain... Begins to Die
    Preaches purely to the converted.
  7. My Wife's Name Is Maurice
    Gamely thesped, lowbrow farce.
  8. Santa Smokes
    A meandering, semi-improvised tale of a terminal Gotham loser who works as Santa when he bombs as an actor.
  9. Sky Blue
    The pic plays like one long chase. Nevertheless, fashioned with ultra-sophisticated means, Sky Blue will be a must-see for anime fans around the world.
  10. Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land
    Pedantic, humorless and one-sided -- qualities that won't encourage exposure beyond the activist left.
  11. In Satmar Custody
    Potentially shocking expose is weakened by one-sided reportage that leaves too many questions unanswered.
  12. Almost Brothers
    Unfortunately, Murat's decision to jump back and forth in time makes the film hard to follow for even the most committed viewer.
  13. Yau doh lung fu bong
    A disjointed story of self-discovery, courage and redemption somewhat incongruously billed as a salute to Akira Kurosawa.
  14. Young Rebels
    In striving simultaneously to cover the transplanted rap scene, sample a wide range of groups, and give an unbiased picture of Cuban society, helmers Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, who have hitherto worked in short-form, blur the overall shape of their picture.
  15. Finding Eleazar
    Will be of keen interest to fans but plays to the unwashed as cringingly pompous.
  16. I am Cuba, the Siberian Mammoth
    Pic's rediscovery in the capitalist U.S., and its reappraisal as a masterpiece of visual pyrotechnics, gives Brazilian documaker Vicente Ferraz's tale an upbeat final twist -- after some mid-film doldrums.
  17. America Brown
    Name cast, occasional deft touches and nifty contrast between the two locales cannot overcome script's terminal awkwardness.
  18. Unveiled
    Several large leaps of faith take some of the dramatic steam out of Unveiled, an otherwise well-acted and accessible lesbian drama that also flirts with issues like loss of identity and anti-Muslim tensions.
  19. Desert Wind
    Far from encouraging "Survivor"-style competitiveness, the desert setting serves as a serene Club Med-type backdrop to the all-male bonding.
  20. Peaceful Warrior
    Mere recitation of homilies for better living -- which is what Nick Nolte's gas station guru imparts to a struggling young gymnast -- and a half-baked account of the athlete's comeback are no substitutes for a complete movie.
  21. Autumn
    Francophile film buffs and obsessive deconstructionists might be amused, but less indulgent auds will find derivative pic artificial and mannered.
  22. Slow Jam King
    Rambling road-trip comedy Slow Jam King offers agreeable shenanigans as three mismatched characters find themselves stuck together on a long drive from New York City to Nashville.
  23. A/k/a Tommy Chong
    While the picture's reporting on government repression of alternative cultural ideas and lifestyles is noteworthy more than anything, it's a blatant promo for Chong's career.
  24. Guernsey
    Ravishingly lensed, widescreen pic's purely cinematic qualities slightly outstrip its narrative ones as central protag, as a result of the apparent suicide, slowly -- very slowly -- questions whether the aspects of her own marriage she thought were cast in stone may be made of less sturdy material.
  25. Wrestling with Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner
    A golden opportunity to analyze the most vital and probably most creative contempo American playwright is missed in Freida Lee Mock's docu, Wrestling With Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner. Kushner's art demands a filmmaker of equally challenging artistry, able to plumb an opus based in polemics, politics and Brecht, instead of psychodrama.
  26. I Have Never Forgotten You: The Life & Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal
    Since the documentary will likely find its home in the educational market, a more balanced approach might have made it more insightful and educational.
  27. Resilience
    Arthouse audiences who welcome challenging material will find sustenance in film's fractured narrative and unflinching characterizations.
  28. Stolen Childhoods
    In its reliance on emotionally loaded voiceover and its disconcertingly direct appeals for support, Len Morris' old-fashioned docu seems more designed for fund-raising pitches than theatrical release.
  29. The Color of Olives
    Mexican helmer Carolina Rivas obviously intends her slow-paced and contemplative doc as a testimony to the indomitability of the human spirit under dire circumstances.
  30. Masai: The Rain Warriors
    Overall, film may feel too slow and didactic for contempo urban kids conditioned by video games. However, the script is never smarmy or complacent, and shows young people engaged in collective problem-solving and decision-making that is often, quite literally, a matter of life and death.
  31. Glastonbury
    While one can appreciate helmer's resistance to a conventional, chronological overview, what emerges is a long, structureless muddle that does justice to neither the stellar acts nor changing countercultural times event has encompassed.
  32. Summer in Berlin
    The modest splash made by Andreas Dresen's Dogme-styled 2002 drama "Grill Point" raised expectations his projects since haven't quite met, including the new Summer in Berlin.
  33. The Changeling
    As a stripped-to-essentials "canned theater" version of a classic Jacobean drama, The Changeling likely will prove most useful as a teaching tool in college-level drama courses.
  34. Fay Grim
    A strange international odyssey that becomes more complicated and loony by the moment. Some viewers will undoubtedly tune out early, others will follow as far as they can -- and a privileged few might make it all the way.
  35. Hollywood Dreams
    Though it boasts slightly more narrative structure than his other work, Jaglom's script still serves as a catalyst for wild improvisation, suggesting the inside-jokey result was more fun to make than to watch.
  36. Orange Winter
    The documentary works best when it simply offers a concise and cogent account of epochal events.
  37. Miriam
    Despite troubling sexual themes (while in hiding, Miriam is raped by her protector), this remarkable, albeit unpolished, personal history may prove appropriate for religious or teaching purposes.
  38. Lights in the Dusk
    Lights in the Dusk finds veteran Finnish helmer Aki Kaurismaki treading water with an amiable but very undercooked noirish fable about a security guard done wrong by a femme fatale.
  39. Over the GW
    Too narratively disjointed to achieve maximum impact, but too emotionally potent in fits and starts to be dismissed out of hand. Ultimately, Over the GW resembles nothing so much as a rough draft for a more conventional feature.
  40. Captivity
    Destined to be better remembered for its grisly billboard imagery than for its relatively tame torture-porn tropes, Captivity is a thoroughly nasty piece of work that nonetheless earns credit for generating modest suspense after a predictable but effective plot twist around the 50-minute mark.
  41. The Hottest State
    Patchy lead perfs and mannered helming subtract value from pic's tangible plus points (solid supporting turns, pleasant score).
  42. Love for Sale
    Film has major assets in Walter Carvalho's stunning landscapes and livewire young lead Hermila Guedes, but overall, it's too uninvolving.
  43. O Jerusalem
    Features some first-rate cinematography and solid acting, but absolutely no sense of emotional boundaries.
  44. Khadak
    Beads together complex ideas and gorgeously wrought segments like pearls on a string, but, with its emblematic characters and sometimes baffling, mystical storyline, pic ultimately remains emotionally distant.
  45. Golda's Balcony
    Kagan's green-screen filmization, in its over-busy editing, ever-changing angles and constantly shifting backdrops, strips the play of its starkness, leaving disproportionate schmaltz and propaganda.
  46. Meeting Resistance
    Proves a welcome addition to the growing body of films on Iraq, but ultimately promises more than it delivers.
  47. The Ten Commandments
    A well-intentioned misfire featuring 3-D CGI animation that recalls lesser vidgames of the mid-1990s.
  48. Electric Apricot
    Generates enough mild humor to keep the spoof rolling, but lacks the commitment and scope.
  49. Mr. Untouchable
    Alternately seduced and repelled by its subject, the garish and power-hungry Harlem gangster and '70s cocaine kingpin Nicky Barnes, Mr. Untouchable is one seriously confused documentary.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Midnight Eagle
    While key blockbuster elements (ticking bombs, intrepid reporters, lightweight politics) are all present, the film's brisk pacing can't hide the fuzzy logic of the tenuously structured, convoluted script.
  51. Still Life
    Has almost zero plot but molto mood. It will appeal to the most faithful of the director's camp-followers and no one else.
  52. CJ7
    "E.T."-inspired comic fantasy about a poor boy adopting a cute alien catches the eye but not fully the heart with its undernourished father-son dynamics, critter hijinks and smattering of social commentary.
  53. Alice's House
    If telenovelas were convincingly real, they would no doubt look like the tumultuous world of domestic strife and libido deftly limned in Alice's House. Documaker Chico Teixeira gives a light, natural feel to his small but fetching first feature.
  54. Girls Rock!
    Aggressively upbeat docu, helmed by two males ill-equipped to bring any distance to the camp's pervasive feel-good feminism, tends to relentlessly reiterate points better served by example.
  55. Hacia la oscuridad
    A convoluted bilingual thriller about a kidnapping in Colombia, Towards Darkness may be too clever for its own good. Frosh director Antonio Negret intertwines so many disparate characters, each with a flashback-studded backstory, that after a while the exhausted viewer, assaulted by sudden time-jumps, agitated handheld camerawork and tediously protracted suspense, ceases to care.
  56. Hats Off
    Despite intimate, prolonged access to her subject, director Jyll Johnstone seems to have missed the most interesting wrinkles of Weddell's story in favor of fuzzy life's-a-stage affirmations.
  57. Tuya's Marriage
    Mainland helmer Wang Quanan and his regular lead actress, Yu Nan, tread on largely familiar ground in Tuya's Marriage.
  58. Anamorph
    Beyond its cool, reflective surfaces and infinite plays with perspective lies nothing -- character, relationships, motives all seemingly irrelevant. Even Willem Dafoe as a haunted cop cannot ground these artfully grisly optical illusions, unconnected to any comprehensible storyline.
  59. Remember the Daze
    As high school zeitgeist stories go, Remember the Daze holds no great secrets or revelations, no iconic characters or “American Pie”-style set pieces, but it demonstrates considerable promise on the part of its director and her up-and-coming cast.
  60. Without the King
    With Swaziland providing this mother lode of material, helmer Michael Skolnik extracts only the most pedestrian of films.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Tracey Fragments
    Page is generally commanding as the self-pitying teenager, but there are several moments when, let down by the text, the young thesp obviously does not believe what she is saying.
  62. Unsettled
    Hootnick seems determined to make everyone likable, no matter how vapid, objectionable or ill-articulated their views are. The emphasis on personality over politics or serious debate makes the pic feel lightweight, ill-suited to theatrical exposure.
  63. Full Grown Men
    A strong cast, beautiful production values and generally pleasant execution can't disguise the fact both laughs and surprises are on the thin side here, despite the abundant care and affection lavished on the central characters by first-time writer-director David Munro.
  64. Elsa y Fred
    Predictable fare that only occasionally fulfils its intention of being simultaneously heartbreaking and heartening.
  65. Finding Amanda
    Although it avoids overt moralizing or clunky lesson-learning, pic's careful balancing act between tragedy and comedy eventually becomes its sole raison d'etre.
  66. Diminished Capacity
    A God's little acre's worth of premeditated eccentricity runs through Diminished Capacity, a triumphant losers-in-Cornville comedy starring Matthew Broderick in a role he might have phoned in, and Alan Alda as a combination Jed Clampett and Raymond Babbitt.
  67. Mad Detective
    A neat idea that doesn't quite hit the bull's-eye.
  68. Sixty Six
    While mazel tovs are due for efficient playing and execution, predictable script seldom scores big laughs.
  69. Canary
    Shiota piles tons of symbolic baggage on his pint-size protagonists, who luckily rise to the challenge.
  70. America the Beautiful
    Wide-ranging educational documentary attaches itself to the rise and fall of a 12-year-old fashion model, and indeed, its sincere, cautionary tone seems best suited to younger auds and small screen exposure.
  71. Allah Made Me Funny: Live in Concert
    This amusing rather than laugh-out-loud funny project is best suited to smallscreen exposure.
  72. Dung che sai duk
    The temptation of artists to fiddle with their earlier works brings predictably mixed results in Ashes of Time: Redux.
  73. Choose Connor
    Once Choose Connor ventures into the larger political arena, it begins to work against itself.
  74. Call + Response
    Remarkably informative yet gracelessly constructed, jumping between documentary and concert footage at random.
  75. Roadside Romeo
    Scores high on the tech front but considerably lower on script smarts.
  76. The Universe of Keith Haring
    Warmly affectionate yet curiously hollow, The Universe of Keith Haring is a straightforward biodoc about the Gotham-based artist and style-setter.
  77. Let Them Chirp Awhile
    That Blitstein pulls off this tiredly self-reflexive conceit with relative panache is due in no small part to the scruffy grace of leads Justin Rice ("Mutual Appreciation") and indie fixture Brendon Sexton III.
  78. The Secret of the Grain
    An overlong, dramatically unbalanced picture whose emotional wallop gets somewhat diffused.
  79. Naked Ambition: An R Rated Look at an X Rated Industry
    While it admirably avoids either schoolboyish titters or schoolmarmish prudery, the docu's cheery neutrality comes at the expense of any point of view at all.
  80. Call of the Wild
    Alternately jerking the audience's tears and splashing snow in their faces, 3-D indie Call of the Wild loses focus (literally) but gets by on its good-hearted demeanor and a gently sweet turn by white-bearded Christopher Lloyd as the heroine's protective gramps.
  81. Tony Manero
    Balancing black humor against allegorical indictment of the Pinochet regime's oppression on narrow stack heels, striking, very offbeat period pic Tony Manero follows a psychotic petty criminal into the depths of his crazed obsession with John Travolta's character in "Saturday Night Fever."
  82. Play the Game
    The comedy's broad perfs, predictable story beats and pro but characterless packaging have a smallscreen feel.
  83. American Casino
    The filmmakers' metaphor of the housing market as a casino, with hard-working people's homes used as chips, although apt, may lack the visual and visceral excitement.
  84. Tickling Leo
    A radiant perf by Annie Parisse and a virtuoso turn by Eli Wallach are insufficient to lift this male intergenerational angst-fest out of the ghetto.
  85. White on Rice
    Its amusingly off-kilter humor underserved by pedestrian packaging, Dave Boyle's sophomore feature, White on Rice, is the kind of comedy that hinges on a protagonist near-imbecilic in all matters social, physical and especially romantic.
  86. If One Thing Matters: A Film About Wolfgang Tillmans
    Kalmbach’s laid-back approach proves more likable than revelatory.
  87. Irene in Time
    Breezy and indulgent, his is a style that lives or dies on the appeal of his characters and performers, and this time he is mostly let down by both.
  88. After the Storm
    Feels like it was made more for the kids' sake than to communicate their story to outside audiences, who would likely prefer a condensed newsmag-style recap.
  89. Adventures of Power
    Absurdist underdog yarn that feels positively Martian in its brand of tom-tomfoolery. Like a "Saturday Night Live" sketch gone on too long, Ari Gold's feature debut will tax unsuspecting viewers, while sending those on Gold's special wavelength into seizures of delight.
  90. Killing Kasztner
    Frequently cutting away from storylines just before they peak and returning to them too much later, odd editing/structural choices never let the picture build up a satisfying head of steam. Overall look is just slightly better than homevideo.
  91. Looking for Palladin
    Amiable but uneven.
  92. Splinterheads
    Writer-director Brant Sersen's amiable indie comedy -- even less edgy than Greg Mottola's theme-park-set "Adventureland" -- attempts to compensate for its too-familiar romantic setup by defining its characters through idiosyncratic hobbies and traits.
  93. Mammoth
    A mixed bag, Mammoth is a good-looking, smoothly directed, continent-hopping drama about parents and children, globalization and the disconnect between rich and poor, but comes with too much repetitive exposition and lacks an emotional payoff.
  94. The Missing Person
    An intriguingly plotted mystery that unfortunately forgets to put the noir in film noir. A drab, pale-looking affair without a trace of visual style, this cross-country pursuit yarn fights a losing battle to sustain viewer attention via narrative alone, so much does it flounder for lack of imagistic flair.
  95. The War on Kids
    A startling wake-up call about appalling conditions prevailing in American schools, The War on Kids contradicts popular wisdom.
  96. Ricky
    Because Ozon doesn't develop his characters once Ricky shows his true nature, the movie's slightly overcooked working-class realism quickly morphs into a grotesque -- and admittedly funny -- story of a mutant baby.
  97. Crazy on the Outside
    Looking and sounding like a second-tier '80s made-for-cabler, Crazy on the Outside is the sort of bland trifle one might watch to kill time during an extended flight.
  98. Tano da morire
    Humor is inconsistent, and the film suffers from lack of shape and fluidity, playing more like a series of disjointed sketches. But there are more than enough high points to compensate.
  99. Lourdes
    Either a subtly subversive black comedy, a deeply spiritual portrait of physical rebirth or a whole lot of nothing in a self-consciously arty package, Lourdes isn't about to reveal its true colors anytime soon.
  100. The Ghost Writer
    What the picture most needed was a complete cinematic rethink and, yes, even some action to move it along.
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